I have used typewriters to fill out forms such as maintenance requests, work orders, SOPs, and  suggestion forms.  I have even typed out job applications before.  In most places I have worked, others have known that typewriters and typing are my hobbies, and a lot of them were surprised to see something on a form typewritten when usually it is handwritten.  In fact, many were glad to finally see a legible rendition for once. 

Yes, I have brought some of my own machines to past jobs I have held--even if just to show them off, or show off my prowess in being able to use them.  I have had mixed reviews, but mostly they were impressed to know there was at least someone who still knows this "lost art,"  as many of them have described it.

Another odd thing is that while typewriters have virtually disappeared from the American workplace their collective memory lives on so the sound of typing may not seem immediately out of place -- though there may be a double take. Most have at least seen movies with offices with a background of typewriter sounds.

Nobody is using my Tippa but if there is interest I have a few portables I would not miss.

 

Somebody finally asked me "how did you type that in?", meaning fill out the form! That would seem to be its own answer but at least it shows the verb "type" is alive and well in its new sense to enter text via a keyboard and "keyboarding" is as linguistically dead as the pedants who created it. My answer of course could only be "I used a typewriter".  

TypewriterKing wrote:

Part of the answer would be in the use of the variable line spacer. First, you have to test the typewriter you're using by typing a series of, say, lerrer i's or l's, and see how they line up with the line scale. You can either adjust your line scale to the very bottoms of the letters, or remember where the line scale sits in relation to the bottoms of the letters--I prefer to do the former. That way, I don't have to memorize--too many things to remember as it is--like sooo many blankety-blank passwords for everything computerized now.
 

Took me a while to get that, then I understood you meant adjusting a part of the typewriter not normally considered user adjustable. Since this is the only typewriter I am using to fill out forms I might just memorize the height above the line scale - I would think having the bottom of the letters exactly on the scale would be annoying for general typing. 

As for passwords, I have a few key ones which I do not write down, and when some annoying site that I am not likely to visit often demands I set up an account I make up some gobbledygook password and write it down in a little notebook. There are pluses and minuses to this approach, to me the greatest risk is that a smaller site will be hacked and lose the password database, and this way the hacker would not be able to use the password to compromise any other account of mine.  For the same reason I never give sites it would not be substantially damaging to lose access to the name of my first pet or the street I grew up on.

I'm a college professor, so I sometimes use a typewriter to write official letters of correspondence, or type-up final comments on student research papers. In years past, I'd also use my USB-typewriter occasionally to break-up the monotony of typing on my laptop. The noise is cathartic. But I'm up for tenure this year, so I've tried really hard not to piss off my senior colleagues up and down the hallways with my noise. So Wednesday, for instance, when I was about to make some noise on my old Underwood 5, I hauled it down the hall to the department office (since the secretaries there don't vote on tenure.) 

Still, one of my newer colleagues saw me and said she "just had to ask" what it was that I was doing, so I explained. 
"Wow, it must be really convenient to have a typewriter in your office for that," she replied. 
"Actually, I have eight of them in my office"....